Google waves final goodbye to Wave

Closes seven more initiatives

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Google has announced that it is getting rid of seven more services as part of an 'off-season' spring clean, with Google Wave to become a read-only site as of January 2012.

The complete closure of Google Wave should come as no surprise as Google had stopped development on the social-network experiment over a year ago, but now it is stopping users being able to create new Waves. The complete closure of the site is set for April 2012.

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Wave isn't the only service shutting up shop – Google revealed on its blog that there are seven services in all to close and has given reasons behind each closure.

It is clear why it is getting rid of some – Google Friend Connect is to merge into Google+ – but there are a few on the list that will surprise some.

One of these is its Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative, which was set to make the world a greener place but Google has held up its hands and explained that there are other companies out there which can carry on the research better than the search giant.

Instead of carrying on its own research Google has published its results and hopes others will continue its green plan.

Other services of note which are closing are: Google Search Timeline, which is now pushing users on to Google Trends; Knol; Google Bookmarks Lists and Google Gears.

From November Gears-based Gmail and Calendar offline will stop working across all browsers and as of December Gears will no longer be available for download – this is all to do with the company's push to HTML5.

"Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience," said Google about its latest spate of closures.